ZHIWHIS Portable Bluetooth Radio, FM AM Shortwave Radios with Sleep Timer and Preset Function, Rechargeable Digital Recorder, Stereo MP3 Player with Lyric Display, Support Micro SD Card and AUX

This radio is perfect for my need to listen to AM Radio but it has amazingly thoughtful features. I wanted a radio that could tune local AM stations with clean sound (no whistles, static, and hiss beyond what is normal for any AM broadcast of sports games or talk radio. Here are two lists of Features I wanted and the other of features I didn’t know I wanted but appreciate and will use. I wanted an AM Radio that could -- Receive especially local AM and also FM stations. The AM needed to be clean and clear without the whistle, hiss, garble,distortion and bad tuning, common on today’s AM radios. -- Record AM broadcasts direct off the air -- Display Digital frequency -- Allowed direct input of frequency for a station on real numeric keys -- Store more that 6 or 8 stations for AM and FM (it does 40 and 60) This radio does all of these. (It’s very rare for a radio to be able to record. This one does.) The recorded broadcasts were indistinguishable from live. (you need a cheap micro TF flash card.) I’m in Houston. The radio received all local AM stations Receiver sensitivity and selectivity were adequate for local stations and even managed to receive far away stations even WLS in Chicago after sunset. Sound quality was clear, without whistle, hiss and distortion. It worked like my AM radios from the 50’s & 60’s--something lost in most of radios today, even from SONY, etc. But I was amazed with other features which worked well -- a real surprise to find in a single package. 1. The LCD screen is very readable and nicely back lit 2. A button will turn on the back light for several seconds (on battery) 3. The radio will work even while being charged (I did not notice the interference mentioned) 4. The battery is li ion rechargeable and a common, standard size BL-5C and cheap to replace but INCLUDED. 5. Won’t need AA batteries to leak and ruin the entire radio. 6. Has headphones out jack (Stereo on FM) 7. Has auto seek to scan a band and store stations in memory 8. Can store any tuned station into any of 40 or 60 memories 9. Press tune up/down an extra second and it seeks to the next broadcasting station 10. Has selectivity enough to separate close together stations 11. Displays time counter during both record and playback. Can Fast Forward also. 12. Has single button mute 13. Can record live voice via built in microphone (Worked perfect, picked up the room) 14. Comes with soft protective case 15. Instructions are comprehensive and written in quite normal English, printed on quality paper. 16. Recorded files are named automatically and appear like any PC scrollable list of files The included USB cable allows charging from nearly any USB charger (I have plenty) and receives the very common mini-htmi charge connection like the ones on Android tablets and cell phones for a decade. The Antenna is quality but not needed in my experience for local broadcasts. At this time The “List Price” is $30 (but was discounted) and with all of these actually working features, that’s a miracle. Final word. I was impressed by the product's functional completeness. It even had a carry strap (already installed) and a little fob on the strap you insert into the back to partially stand up the radio! All of the above, I have personally verified. I tried the Short Wave band, out of curiosity, with no results—didn’t care and silly to expect otherwise. Amazing radio. Amazing combination of features. Amazing price. I’ll likely buy a spare because this is in a class by itself.

First of all, I purchased an older version of this radio nearly a year and a half ago and liked it a lot even then. It could record from any source, mic, radio, line-in, even bluetooth, and could play mp3 files on a TF/MicroSD chip. But the automatic gain control built into the mic recording mode didn't really work as expected; many times the recorded sound would be too loud and would fluctuate rather wildly, while other times just clearing my throat close to the mic would allow the automatic gain control to work more as expected, though this was not guaranteed to work for every mic recording. Also, recordings were stored in folders called MRECORD, BRECORD, LRECORD, etc, and inserting a new TF card then reinserting the old one would cause recordings to be mixed in with the music in shuffle mode. Now fast forward to this new version, and wow have they outdone themselves with this one! First, the recording quality defaults to mp3 160Kb/s/channel, so stereo recordings via line or bluetooth are now 320Kb/s and mono recordings such as via the mic are recorded at 160Kb/s, a major improvement over the max 128Kb/s of the previous version. Also, the automatic gain control seems to be off by default, though I haven't checked the menu system to see whether or not it can be turned on. It's enough that it is off and that in most situations, the mic is not too sensitive and the recording will not be distorted unless I speak directly into the mic or blow into it or something as clipworthy as that. Playing back my recordings made with this new version sounds amazing now. I even got an excellent recording from FM radio, though I only tested for about half a minute. Other tests using the mic, both recording on the unit itself and connected to a computer using the unit as the recording source sounded quite good played back on the computer. Even better, recordings are now stored in folders named as AUX, BLUETOOTH, MIC and RADIO under the RECORD folder, which is only played when the unit is switched to recordings mode by holding the 0 key down. Doing the same to switch back to music playback mode will leave the RECORD folder out of the music being played, even in shuffle mode. Radio reception on all bands is very good, especially considering the price. I initially purchased the earlier version of this radio for casual shortwave listening, but found all the rest of its impressive feature set to be too compelling to ignore. Still, shortwave reception is not bad either, making this a great all-around value for the price. It won't win any battery life contests with the included battery, but the common BL5-C battery is rather inexpensive and after-market batteries will range in capacity from about the same as what ships with this radio up to more than 1 1/2 times the 1000MaH that ships with it, and that will considerably increase the life per charge. Sound quality is not bad through the internal speaker, especially as small as the radio is, and the maximum volume will certainly fill a small to medium room. Headphones though are another matter. I get more bass from the speaker than I hear through headphones, and something I find even worse is that the left and right channels on both the older and newer version of this radio as well as another similar radio by another brand are reversed, so I have to wear my headphones backwards to hear the sound as it was intended to be heard. As this seems to be a wide-spread flaw among many inexpensive radios, although I find it to be very annoying, I didn't feel the need to take off a star for this one, as the rest of the features and the newest implementation far outweigh the annoyance of the reversed headphone channels. I just note it here in case something can be done by the manufacturer at some point, as many improvements have certainly been made just in the past year and a half, all while keeping the price low. Overall, this little radio packs a ton of features in a very small, very inexpensive package, everything from AM/FM/SW reception to mp3 music playback to mp3 recording from every supported sound source to card reader to USB audio device. I can't recommend this one enough, and if it withstands the punishment the last one took, I'll be back in a year and a half to get another one.